Regulations for the prevention of cholera.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Regulations for the prevention of cholera. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/34 (page 4)
    countries and climates, and amidst all varieties of the physical political, and social conditions of the people, appear to discredit the once prevalent opinion that cholera is, in itself, contagious, an opinion which iffallacious, must be mischievous, since it diverts attention from the true source of danger and the real means of protection, and fixes it on those which are imaginary; creates panic; leads to the neglect and abandonment of the sick; oc- casions great expense tor what is worse than useless ; and with- draws attention from that brief but important interval between the commencement and the development of the disease, during which remedial measures are most effective in its cure. Although it is so far true tha£ certain conditions may favour its spread from person to person, as when great numbers of the sick are crowded together in close unventilated apartments, yet this is not to be considered as effecting the general principle of its non-contagious nature ; nor are such conditions likely to occur in this country; moreover, the preventive measures founded on the theory of contagion—namely, internal quaran- tine regulations, sanitary cordons, and the isolation of the sick on which formerly the strongest reliance was placed, have been recently abandoned in all countries where cholera has appeared from the general experience of their inefficiency. The evidence also proves that cholera almost always affords by premonitory symptoms, warning of its approach in time for the employment of means capable of arresting its progress. If indeed in certain situations—as where there is an unusual con- centration of the poison, or in certain individuals who are pe- culiarly predisposed to the disease—-the attack may sometimes appear to be instantaneous, still the general conclusions, that cholera is not in itself contagious, and that it commonly gives distinct warning of its approach, are two great facts well cal- culated to divest this disease of its chief terrors, and to show the paramount importance of the means of prevention, so much more certain than those of cure. The proved identity of the causes which promote the origin and spread of epidemic diseases in general with those that fa- vour the introduction and spread of Asiatic cholera, appear to indicate the true measures of precaution and prevention against a pestilence which, after an absence of 16 years, and at a season